Six stand out retail technology funding rounds
RTIH rounds up the retail systems ventures who have been making waves with major investments, including OLIO, Blendid, Beauty Pie and commercetools.
1. OLIO
OLIO, a UK-based mobile app for the sharing of food and other items, has closed a $43 million Series B funding round.
The venture will use the cash for product development, international expansion and its Food Waste Hero programme.
“The pandemic coupled with the accelerating climate crisis has made it clearer than ever, that it’s no longer acceptable for businesses to throw away perfectly good food,” says Tessa Clarke, Co-founder, OLIO
“Clients such as Tesco, Pret a Manger, and Compass Catering recognise that working with us is inevitable if they are to achieve zero food waste locations.”
“That’s because internal initiatives and working with discounting apps and charities alone just won’t get them there. We have an incredibly strong pipeline and now need to staff up fast to unlock this.”
2. Blendid
Food automation and robotics venture, Blendid, has closed an oversubscribed round of crowdfunding.
Hitting its $2 million target via 1,475 individual investors during a four month campaign on StartEngine, the venture has now raised a total of $20 million in investment through a combination of traditional venture capital, strategic investors and crowdfunding.
During its crowdfunding effort, Blendid inked a commercial agreement with an unnamed “major commercial food service operator” which also made a strategic investment in the company, to help scale its manufacturing and operations.
3. Beauty Pie
Beauty Pie, which describes itself as a buyers’ club for high end beauty and wellness products, has announced completion of a Series B financing round of £72 million.
Index Ventures co-led the round with Insight Partners, existing investors Balderton Capital and General Catalyst, and Latitude VC. This brings Beauty Pie’s total funding to date to approximately £126 million.
Danny Rimer, Partner at Index Ventures, comments: "Beauty Pie delivers huge value to its customers demonstrated by exceptional member loyalty over many years.”
“It's a model that marries true industry disruption with customer obsession - a winning combination."
4. Scalapay
Buy now, pay later (BNPL) specialist Scalapay has raised $155 million in equity funding, at a $700 million valuation, as part of a Series A investment round led by Tiger Global.
Along with Klarna’s recent $46 billion valuation, this underscores just how hot the BNPL market is right now, given that Scalapay was only founded in 2019 and $155 million is a serious amount of money for a Series A round.
5. DivideBuy
Davidson Kempner Capital Management has agreed a new £300 million lending facility with buy now, pay later venture DivideBuy and will also acquire a minority equity stake in the company.
6. commercetools
commercetools, a provider of e-commerce APIs that retailers can use to build the likes of customised payments, check-outs, social commerce and marketplace offerings, has landed $140 million in funding, a Series C that values the company at $1.9 billion.
The funding is being led by Accel, with previous investors Insight Partners and REWE Group also participating.
